


(to contemplate the stars)

by pentaghastly



Series: iserill lavellan [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Voice Kink, have you heard greg ellis' voice jfc who can blame her, illiterate lavellan, poc elves are cool as heck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-29
Updated: 2014-12-29
Packaged: 2018-03-04 02:32:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2905985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pentaghastly/pseuds/pentaghastly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A horrible idea. Nothing short of a disaster. He continued to read, turning page after page as gold eyes flickered up to meet her own once, twice, three more times and - yes, a horrible idea, but also a brilliant one.</p><p>Horrible, because he was the Commander of her army, and she the leader of a rebellion, a Dalish, and they were both inevitably bound to die by the end of their sad tale. Pessimistic, perhaps, but also the truth - stories like theirs did not end in happiness. Stories like theirs, like the one which he was reading to her, did not have the perfect fade to black, did not end with the lovers gazing off into the sunset, hands clasped together as they faced eternity.</p><p>But there was something to be said, she had always thought, for a well-written tragedy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(to contemplate the stars)

>   
>  "We were reading one day, to pass the time,  
>  of Lancelot, how love had seized him.  
>  We were alone, and without any suspicion  
>  And time and time again our eyes would meet  
>  over that literature, and our faces paled,  
>  and yet one point alone won us.  
>  When we had read how the desired smile  
>  was kissed by so true a lover,  
>  This one, who never shall be parted from me,  
>  kissed my mouth, all a-tremble.  
>  Gallehault was the book and he who wrote it  
>  That day we read no further.”  
>  \- Dante Alighieri  
> 

It had been innocent, to begin with.

Iserill watched the way his mouth formed the words as he read - what he was saying she did not know, had long since been distracted by the curl of his lip, the velvet of his voice, the furrow between his brow that came with deep concentration. A story of a king, his queen, and his knight, that much she had gathered, and of an illicit affair born of passion unmatched by any in history, but the rest...the rest was gone, long abandoned with her self-control. A shame, really; the story had sounded so interesting when Cassandra had first described it to her.

The idea had been mostly born out of boredom - politics kept her in Skyhold, which was not exactly small by any definition of the word, but she was an _elf_ , and to be trapped between stone and sky unable to leave, to simply run and see where her feet might take her, was maddening. 

Skyhold had a library. She could not read, had no interest in learning, but it seemed to be as good a way to pass the time as any so long as she was stuck in the keeps walls. Cullen had not seemed overly keen on the idea of reading aloud to her at first, insisting that there were more important things to be done, but she had always been persuasive, and he had always seemed particularly weak when faced with her smiles. Besides, he had the sweetest voice of anyone she had ever known, so it truly had seemed to be her best option.

Honeyed eyes flickered up over the pages to meet her own, and _oh_ , this may have been logical but it was also a terrible idea, quite possibly her worst yet and...and she didn’t care. She didn’t _care_ , not in the least.

“Inquisitor? Are you bored? I can stop if you’d prefer.” There was amusement behind his question, a glimmer in his eyes that she had grown to - 

_No._

Not that, not yet, but...something.

“Keep going. We can’t stop before we get to the steamy bits.” And there it was - the faint stain of pink against alabaster cheeks, the slight stammering (“ _St...steamy bits? Maker, please tell me this version didn’t come from Cassandra’s private collection.”_ ) as he carried on to the next paragraph. What was he saying? She didn’t know, but she knew that his voice sent a tremor through her body which she had felt few times before, that the way the words fell from his mouth like silk, like cream.

His voice was - she did not know if she could do it justice, the way which it made her feel. It was becoming nothing short of a distraction; in war meetings, she found herself unable to focus on anything but the way it ran through her, curling through her hair and over her skin and down to the deepest parts of her which she did not know a sound could reach, causing shivers down her spine as if he was touching her with his hands rather that with nothing but his words. And now there they were, seated on the couch in her quarters so close to one another she could hear the steady beat of his heart, and as he read the book aloud she wondered if he knew how desperately she craved every bit of him.

A horrible idea. Nothing short of a disaster. He continued to read, turning page after page as gold eyes flickered up to meet her own once, twice, three more times and - yes, a horrible idea, but also a brilliant one.

Horrible, because he was the Commander of her army, and she the leader of a rebellion, a Dalish, and they were both inevitably bound to die by the end of their sad tale. Pessimistic, perhaps, but also the truth - stories like theirs did not end in happiness. Stories like theirs, like the one which he was reading to her, did not fade to black, did not end with the lovers gazing off into the sunset, clasped together as they faced eternity.

But there was something to be said, she had always thought, for a well-written tragedy.

“What happens to them?”

His gaze snapped up, surprised - how far along in the story were they? How long had she been silent? Had the lovers already perished, smote to the ground in a pile of ashes and dust? Lavellan hoped they had not; pathetic, no doubt, but she had been...rooting for them.

“What happens whom, my lady?”

“It’s Iserill, not ‘my lady’ - how many times have we discussed this? And I mean the lovers, of course. The knight and the queen. Are they happy? Do they die?”

“I…” Had he even read this story before? Cassandra had claimed that the tale itself was well-known to all humans, a legend of sorts, but perhaps they did not have such books amongst the Templars. “Are you sure you wish me to spoil it for you? We’re still a ways to the end, and…”

“I was hardly listening anyways, honestly.” A flick of her hands dismissed his worries, and if he looked vaguely offended she could not convince herself to feel badly. “I just would like to know.”

He paused for a moment, contemplative, and she took the silence to admire his profile in the shaded light of the fading sun that crept through the windows of her quarters. Had he ever loved, loved anyone like the knight in the story? A part of her, an awful part, hoped that he had not - that he had kept that part of his soul hidden safe away for her to discover, a landmark on which she would place her claim like she does during her travel. Another part wondered if it was even possible, or merely the work of fiction, of a creative and romantic mind.

“No. They were selfish in their love, and it did nothing but bring pain and destruction to those around them.”

 _Of course._ It would not be a proper love story if it had a happy ending.

“Ah. That’s...a shame. I was hoping -” This was the point where she should be stopping herself, should be turning and running from the opposite direction, but the questioning look in his eyes kept her talking, gaze shifting from his own and words rushing out before she could recognize the words coming from her mouth. “Do you think that the same would happen to me? If I were to care for someone, I mean.”

“Do you...care for someone?”

 _Shit_.

Apparently he hadn’t expected his question either, if the look of astonishment and humiliation on his face was anything to go by. And what was she to say? There was the truth, of course, but the truth opened her to hurt and pain and things she could not think to imagine. But who was to say the lie would be much better?

She _hated_ words. It was part of the reason that she had never had much interest in reading - words were cheap, overused and inauthentic and too easily manipulated, twisted to one’s favour. Actions heald the truth.

Her lips sought his out of their own accord; the kiss was intended to be chaste, barely lasting an instant before she could make her escape, and for a moment it seemed like it might be. He was frozen in his seat, frozen as though he might pull away at any moment, and a piece of her hoped that he might - let her down easy, rip the bandage off cleanly.

But then Cullen’s arm was snaking behind her head and he was pulling her in deeper, and she wondered for a moment if they would forgive her for this - the Creators, the Maker, _whomever_ sat on their throne in the sky and judged the actions of the weak - and oh, was she weak. Horribly, pitifully weak, and she wanted him. She could be damned to the deepest pits of the shemlen’s hell, but it did not change the fact that she craved him down to her core.

“ _Iserill_.” He gasped her name against her lips like a prayer, and _shit_ , she hadn’t realized just how badly she had needed this, needed him until he was pulling her off from her corner of the couch on which they were seated and across, into his lap, so that her legs were straddled tightly around his hips and she could feel him, feel _all_ of him, against her so close that it was almost as if they were the same person.

“If I had known this was what you meant by ‘steamy bits’,” he pulled away from her slightly, so that their noses were brushing, so close that his two honey-gold eyes blurred into one the longer that she stared into them, and his voice was thick with a desire which she was certain likely reflected that in her own eyes. “I might have stopped reading sooner.”

A delirious giggle and she pulled him closer, back in so that her lips could scorch a path down his jaw, up his cheeks, to the tips of his ears. 

Would this destroy the both of them? Would they be ruined, like the lovers in the story, and burn their friends down with them? She did not know, and - and he pulled her lips back to hers and kissed her like a man drowning, and she did not _care_. It was selfish and wrong and she hated herself for being such a fool, but...she couldn’t. Her only solace came from the fact that if she were to be condemned for all eternity, at the very least he would be there with her.

It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t delicate or loving or kind; that was a luxury reserved for people who had time, who had a future, who had hope for things which they did not. It was hard and fast and aggressive and full of a passion which Iserill had never known - lips coming together in a desperate clash, hands tearing at whatever fabric they could reach until every barrier that stood between them was gone, pulling each other closer as if they could breath one another in - his scent was heady and rich, like polished mahogany and fresh parchment and a crackling fire, and it drew her in like a moth to a flame. She was captivated, hopeless, lost, and judging by the breathy moans that were escaping his lips, he wasn’t faring much better.

She wanted to feel him, _all_ of him. but more than that she wanted him to feel her, to make sure he knew the want that was radiating off of her in waves. She wanted his hands to trail down her body, to know the wetness between her thighs, the heat that pooled in her belly every time he touched her. She wanted him to know, wanted him to - 

He slipped inside of her, and at once she could see all the stars.

“ _Maker,_ ” he exhaled at the same time she let out a strangled “ _Creators,_ ” and she would have laughed at the discordance of their breathy prayers had she not been overwhelmed by the feel of him inside her. Iserill had known men, but this was _Cullen_ , and every small sound that he made, every desperate thrust of his hips was nearly enough to send her over the edge.

It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t delicate or loving or kind; it was needy and graceless, her tugging his mouth to hers with a strangled plea, him whispering hot and desperate against her lips - “so long, wanted this for _so long_ , won’t want anyone like this again in my life - Maker’s breath, Iserill, _please_ ” - and she was already so close, so painfully close and getting closer with every word that he spoke, and from the grip of his hands on her waist, sure to leave it’s mark come morning, she knew that he was too.

“ _Her touch was like fire that did not burn, and by her touch I was made pure again._ ” The words were quiet, hardly more than a whisper, hard to make out, but she knew - he was speaking the Chant, likely to stop himself from finishing before her, but _oh_ , the raw want in his voice, the want that no doubt mirrored her own exactly was enough to end her then and there. 

She tensed, and at once she could see all the heavens.

It was - she had known men, but she had never known that it could be like _this_ , that a few words and a few awkward, unrefined thrusts could make her feel as if she were a drowning woman whose head had just broke the surface, had never known that it could feel like falling and flying all at once, that her world could come crashing down around from a lover’s touch, and that it wouldn’t be terrifying but the closest to a miracle she would ever know.

Cullen was not far behind her; at least, she did not _think_ that he had been, only knew that the next time she opened her eyes, be it seconds or minutes or hours later, he had fallen still, head buried in her neck, breath heavy as he clung to her.

“I am afraid,” she spoke after a moment, fingers absently curling through his hair. “That we have just been rather selfish as well, and before we...I need you to swear something to me.”

“Anything.” His lips against her skin as he spoke felt like a kiss, fleeting, sweet, and she wanted more of him, wanted him until she forgot that there existed anything in the world outside of the two of them - but this was more important, despite the fact that at the time it did not feel as if there could be anything more important than way his hands were running across her back. “Anything you ask, I will swear it.”

She reached forward, placed her hand under his chin so that she could look into his eyes - they were a colour unlike any she had ever seen, like the gold of the sunset, shimmering fields of wheat, the rings on her fingers, the gilded drapery that stretched across the castle’s halls. There was truth in them, and...and something else, something else that she did not dare to speak in case she was wrong, in case he crushed her heart. Pain and destruction, that was what the knight and his queen had brought. She would not allow him to bring the same.

“Swear to me that if we are to have a story of our own, it will be different.”

His answer was a smile, and it was - it was too much, too bright, _too much_ , as if looking directly into the sun, and Iserill had to turn her head for fear of going blind. It was too much, the crushing feeling inside her chest, the way her lungs could not seem to take in enough air, the way he cradled her in his arms, arms that could easily snap her fragile bones in half, as if she were the most precious thing in the universe, as if he could heal her every wound, fix her every hurt with his gentle embrace. She wondered if her could; in all honesty, she would not be surprised.

“I swear.” And she had thought his voice lovely before, but those two words were the most beautiful she had ever heard, words that she would happily hear him speak over and over until he could speak no more.

“I swear.” And he kissed her like a dying man took his last breath, and that day they read no further.


End file.
